For many, the recent news that enrollments in undergraduate
computer science programs are no longer on a downward slide is
reassuring, but I seriously hope that it doesn't begin to undo
the good that has come out of our mutual fear, most especially
that it does not diminish the commitment across all educational
levels to address the serious issues in K12 computer
science education.

Creating real, sustainable change in any area of education is
a frustratingly slow process. Public education is a complex
bureaucracy where competing ideologies, philosophies, ontologies,
and pedagogies vie for attention and control. It is subject to
extreme pressures. As a profession, teaching is simultaneously
professionalized and devalued. And, in most cases, the employees
are overworked, underpaid, and severely under-resourced.

But change is possible. Five years ago, ACM founded the
Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) with the goal of
addressing serious concerns in K12 computer science
education, including the lack of curriculum standards, poor
professional development for teachers, common misunderstandings
about computer science, student and parent perceptions that there
are no jobs in the computing field, and the complete mess that is
computer science teacher certification.

Today, CSTA stands as an example that faith, funding, and a
whole lot of volunteer support from the top to the bottom can
achieve something close to miracles. The guidelines in the ACM
Model Curriculum for K12 Computer Science are now
recognized as the defacto national computer science curriculum
standards. Thanks to its partnership with colleges and
universities through the JETT and TECS programs, CSTA has held
more than 96 professional development workshops for teachers
across the U.S. The annual Computer Science & Information
Technology symposium is the closest thing we have to an annual
national conference for K12 computer science and
information technology educators. CSTA's white paper The New
Educational Imperative: Improving High School Computer Science
Education provides a cogent, research-supported argument for
the role that computer science must play in the K12
academic canon. Careers in computing resources developed by CSTA
and the ACM Education Board have now made their way into every
school in the U.S. and several other countries as well. Finally,
CSTA's new report on teacher certification (Ensuring Exemplary
Teaching in an Essential Discipline) proposes a new framework
for guaranteeing we have the teachers we require with the skills
we need in our classrooms.

But something equally important came out of the enrollment
crisis. Colleges and universities facing dwindling class sizes
began reaching out to K12 computer science educators and
students in order to recruit students directly into their
programs, and in doing so, many faculty learned that the
assumptions they had been making about what it is like to teach
computer science in K12 were misguided at best and
paternalistic at worst.

Many colleges and universities now have ongoing outreach and
mentoring programs because they understand that waiting for
students to come to them is a recipe for disaster. Interest in
computer science must begin long before students sign up for
their first university or college courses. It begins in
K12 where other academic disciplines first sow the seeds
of interest and engagement.

This increased interest in direct outreach to K12 has
also prompted a greater level of understanding and a spirit of
cooperation across educational levels that will benefit us
greatly in the long run, but only if we do not lose sight of what
we are doing and return to our former isolated complacency.

The next year will be a pivotal one for us. Talk (and hopes)
of a new, relevant, rigorous, and more engaging sequence of high
school computer science courses (including a new gold standard
Advance Placement computing course) and an ambitious plan for
teacher professional development could mean a real renaissance
for our discipline and field.

As we begin to work toward these goals, the challenges will be
enormous as will the temptation to circle the wagons and fire
inward. I hope our community has the vision to rise above
fragmentation and discord so we can work together to do something
important and valuable. We did it when we formed CSTA and I think
we can do it again to reframe computer science education.

Footnotes

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